You Must Set Forth at Dawn (13 page)

We did not require much urging—few, if any, passed up the opportunity for such encounters. Some were already domiciled, by choice or by circumstances, in the home of their colonial patrons. For others, each invitation was a respite, a banquet to be savored, sometimes greedily devoured. We met, debated, wined and dined, pursued amorous prospects, and felt recharged. . . . All too soon, it was time for each to return to a different clime and terrain and confront his or her own serpents.

In 1983 I fulfilled a long-held craving: to visit postrevolution Cuba for the first time. An invitation arrived from Casa de las Americas and found me more than ready. It was an invigorating respite, not unexpectedly, debating the purpose of art and ideology with the Cuban intellectual vanguard of the revolution. A former Royal Court colleague, the working-class playwright Arnold Wesker, somewhat self-conscious in his custom-tailored Mao suit, was at least well suited for a photo call when news came unexpectedly that he had won a prestigious prize. All ideological tussle was forgotten as we suspended the agenda and moved into the celebration mode in the Casa, continuing late into the night. Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? found unexpected popularity among working-class revolutionaries—it seemed a paradox, this rite of exorcism between a middle-class American couple being so totally divorced from the ideological concerns of a world in turmoil. Then a four- to five-hour harangue by Fidel Castro at the Conference of Socialist Architects with a fear building up in me that I was watching a personality cult in the making, one that might breed a nation of revolutionary sycophants. A tour of the island, visiting the high-water landmarks of the revolution. Starved for wine by the rationing policy in Havana, we found the countryside more accommodating. In a modest seaside restaurant where we stopped for lunch, a cask of robust red wine, allegedly “washed up” from a Spanish smuggling vessel, was unstoppered in our honor by the straight-faced restaurateur, who appeared unfazed by the presence of the revolutionary watchdogs. We did not get to Santiago de Cuba until late that night, blissfully drunk.

I fell in love with a dancer in Havana, came close to eloping with a widow in Santiago de Cuba, ate frogs' legs in a restaurant for the first time, and marveled at the Cubans' technical ingenuity in keeping ancient Yankee Cadillacs purring smoothly with improvised spare parts. From time to time, the question of Albee's play would come up, our fellow confreres still amazed that such a play should find a place in a revolutionary environment. Ritual, I offered, ritual. Ritual is largely classless; and a debate erupted, as stridently as when I had offered that proletarian art—like the arts of indigenous peoples—had its secure place but should not be permitted to tyrannize over individual departures that offer insights outside the blinkers of the party line. What was remarkable was that the Cuban revolutionaries, in the main, agreed, but the European socialists—in the main—deplored the notion as bourgeois.

“Bourgeois” was also enemy territory in the United States of the 1960s, and was sometimes interchangeable with “white,” “racist,” “segregationist”— against all of which the black writers were producing a powerful body of revolutionary work. That visit, in 1964, was a lavish concourse, openly sponsored by the U.S. State Department, its intent being to bring virtually all of Africa to dialogue with the United States. No expense had been spared. All disciplines—from the arts and sciences to economics, philosophy, and possibly even religion—were in attendance, making it look as if Africa had been emptied of all analytic, creating, or governing structures for this grandiose effort to capture minds in the open contest between the ideological blocs, East and West. Africa was a much-sought prize, and one side at least, the West, was prepared to spare no expense to grab it and keep it within its orbit. I said to my colleagues, “Listen, we had better indulge to the fullest”—we did—“because it will never happen again.” It never has!

It was a chance not to be missed, seeking out kindred spirits in the combat zones of the black nation within the outer embrace. The Spirit House of Leroi Jones—later Imamu Amiri Baraka—hovered between a monastery and a revolutionary training school, joined in a regimen of rigorous discipline and leader worship that was nearly cultic in character. It was wildly different in style and mood from the more democratic setting of the Lafayette Theater in Manhattan, also a revolutionary den for black liberation and equality, where Ernie McLintock, Ed Bullins, Ben Caldwell, and others held sway through their plays, smoked marijuana, needled the white establishment, and warned, just like Leroi Jones and others of that movement, of the apocalypse to come, unless . . .

Into others' battle zones or cultural oases—those visits were valued furloughs, interjections of comparative sanity, since even the insanities of others, as long as one remains sufficiently detached, inject a sense of proportion into one's close concerns. Every planned escape was guaranteed to be curtailed, however, and thus, ultimately, I was constantly left feeling shortchanged afterward. Still, they were much-needed interruptions in what was fast becoming an existence dominated by the politics of the immediate, demanding instant response. Sometimes the curtailment of the duration of such external relief was of my own ordering, not of any urgent summons from home that stemmed from an unexpected and menacing development. There would come that moment when the mind revolted. I would look around, listen to the conversation around me—a pretentious note, perhaps, a preposterous proposition, an artificial ardor, a comfortable liberalism or armchair radicalism—and the wine would turn flat on my tongue, my mind would go blank, leaving only the rebuke: What are you still doing in this place? The following day would find me at the airport, headed back to that region of the world that would come to be dubbed the “wild, wild West” by a young military officer who, undergoing his Sandhurst training during the Western Regional elections, had no inkling of the political destiny that lay ahead of him.

Wanted!

The most extended break from the gathering firestorm of the West came from the Commonwealth Arts Festival of 1965; then it was back to base to have one's face rubbed in the conduct of the Western regime, aided and abetted by the federal government, increasingly arbitrary, vindictive, and desperate. My series of sociopolitical sketches—Before the Blackout, The New Republican, and so on— had served to calm the rioting conscience for a while, and the urge to intervene in a more direct way would have been stilled—perhaps—but for one afternoon of sheer serendipity.

Saturday was the weekly concession to a full-bodied Nigerian menu in the Femi Johnson home. Otherwise, my friend Femi, then married to an English wife, would dine on steak and gravy, lamb chops and mashed potatoes, fish and chips, shepherd's pie, and all the other delicacies that could be found on any English table. My presence in the Femi Johnson household whenever I found myself in Ibadan on a Saturday afternoon had thus become routine. I went there to be overfed! The warm reception of my play
The Road,
most especially through a review by Penelope Gilliatt of
The Observer,
had been gratifying, but that was no solace for nearly two weeks of the barely tolerable to execrable restaurant fare that one could afford in 1965 London. I had accepted a new position in the English Department of the University of Lagos but had yet to settle into my office. A huge craving for some solid Nigerian cooking had thus been stored up, and the first Saturday afternoon after my return I could hardly wait for Ibadan and Femi's gourmandizing company. In truth, I was suffering from double starvation: I needed to catch up with the news and explore the ongoing politics of the West that had taken the gloss off my theater debut at the Commonwealth Arts Festival.

In attendance as usual on that day was a mutual friend, Michael Olumide, then controller of the broadcasting station in Ibadan. The election results dominated all discussion, and it was not long before a pall of depression hung over an afternoon that was normally devoted to pure, unabashed gluttony. The West, to which we all three belonged, was being stolen from under our noses.

And then, quite casually and in all innocence, Michael Olumide dropped a bombshell that instantly launched a turmoil in my head. Michael had been summoned by the premier to record his victory speech. There was also the possibility that the premier would come into the studio and do his broadcast live. The recording was intended as a backup in case he could not leave what had become his prime ministerial fortress—and prison. Whatever the final decision, the victory broadcast of the NNDP, and Akintola's reelection as prime minister of the West—our West—would be made that night!

The broadcast had to be stopped! Mazi Ukonu and his radio crew had long departed, so a counterbroadcast, relayed through the Eastern transmitters as the election results had been, was impossible. The premier held all the cards. A fait accompli, consecrated on radio waves, would demoralize the opposition, and that broadcast, from a position of incumbency strength, would commence the process of legitimizing a detested regime, with the consequent danger of resignation and apathy from a cowed populace. Another four years under the NNDP could easily become a life sentence for a struggling democracy; there was the very real danger that the now barely hidden agenda to formalize a one-party dictatorship by the victorious alliance would become irresistible. Opposition would be crushed. There would be money- or contract-induced defections. Some would succumb to blackmail. Others would be squeezed into submission through assaults on their means of livelihood. Some of the NPC and NNDP politicians had already begun to raise a chant for a “one-party democracy.” The continent was filled with such models of power consolidation masquerading as democracies. Their would-be imitators in the nation virtually drooled in envy as they cast glances at such bastions of the crudity of power. The formal capture of the West was bound to reinforce the proponents of an iron hand.

I had wrestled intermittently with the problem of violence. To be caught up in a violent situation, compelled to respond to it, presents no agonizing choice; to initiate one is another matter. I had never seen myself as a pacifist, never persuaded myself that the liberation of any tyrannized space can always be achieved by nonviolent means. I tried to caution myself, however, about the dangers of unstructured violence, violence that comes to exist for itself, as a glorified end that loses all focus and control and no longer discriminates between its two principal clients positioned at either end of a living axis: Power and Freedom. The most principled of struggles has its share of psychopaths— and I was fortunate to have received early education through encounters with a few of these almost from the start of my political involvement. I was equally lucky to find myself within a close-knit group whose members believed that violence was a stage to be avoided for as long as and wherever possible, insisting, however, that self-defense constitutes its own justification. This includes defense against violation, such as acts of robbery or extortion. Rape. Any form of dehumanization. Even to be robbed is to be diminished, and to be robbed of the seemingly intangible—such as a civic voice—is to be diminished as a citizen. To resist such a diminution meant, in my view, a simple act of self-defense, of self-preservation.

The elections had thrown up many instances where the most diffident individual found himself compelled to write his own limited rules of engagement in response to real violation. My favorite recollection was that of a young politician, Soji Odunjo, a few years younger than I. He was probably the youngest of the Action Group candidates, a wispy, normally mild-mannered youth, rather retiring in demeanor. I had long known him, before he entered politics, only as the junior brother of a colleague from the old University of Ibadan. Perhaps politics did course secretly through Soji's veins—he was, after all, the son of one of the founding members of Egbe Omo Oduduwa, the Yoruba cultural organization that later metamorphosed into the Action Group. Nevertheless, I was quite surprised to discover that Soji considered entering the wild world of politics of the mid-sixties.

After voting had ended and the votes were tallied, Soji found himself faced with a crooked returning officer who refused to release the results in his electoral ward. He had campaigned hard and fair, against all odds, displaying unsuspected political instincts, and now all he wanted was that the results, already announced to the waiting crowd, should be set down so that he and his opponent could sign the returns as required by electoral law. The officer, however, insisted that the results would be released only at the state capital, Ibadan, and from there be broadcast by the radio station. Since Soji knew by then—as did the entire nation—what happened to returns en route, he dashed home and returned with a loaded shotgun, whose muzzle he then pressed against the head of the returning officer. I remain convinced that Soji would have been incapable of pulling the trigger even if the officer had persisted; still, by the count of three, the man had handed over the card. His mission accomplished, Soji drove to the collating office in Ibadan, where he logged the results. Then he went home to sleep the sleep of the just.

Thinking of the course I was about to embark upon, I found my position no different from Soji's, except that I was not even a candidate but was acting as one of the electorate who felt bound to protect his rights. In consonance with the majority of the populace of the Western Region, I was being robbed of a voice. A series of false results had already been announced, of increasingly cynical attributions. Now this act of robbery was about to be made official by the head of the robbery consortium, the premier, also the principal receiver/ beneficiary of the stolen goods, all rolled into one. Picking somewhat distractedly at my plate in Femi's dining room, I found it only slightly incongruous that I should be considering, and with complete equanimity, whether or not I should arm myself before going to recover—or at least prevent the formal acquisition of—this stolen property. I would have preferred that we take over the broadcasting station entirely and occupy it for some days, stoking up the now-inevitable uprising with the usual messages of resistance and solidarity, but what forces we could muster were hopelessly inadequate for such an undertaking. We had no precedent to follow, not even the time to stock up for a prolonged siege. A well-directed police action would flush us out in no time!